A bestselling author, sought-after speaker, and life coach, Debbie Reber is passionate about giving girls practical tools to help them rock their lives.

Debbie spent the first years of her career as a TV and video producer with CARE, UNICEF, and Nickelodeon, where she created PSAs, documentaries, and programming that educated children and young people around the world. Her last corporate gig was as a development executive for Cartoon Network Studios. While working in the nonprofit and corporate world, she volunteered with teens in NYC and Los Angeles through one-on-one mentoring and offering free workshops on everything from creative writing to filmmaking, and advocated for underserved youth.

Since turning in the key to her corporate office in 2003, Deborah has authored a number of nonfiction and fiction books for young adults and women, including Doable: The Girl’s Guide to Accomplishing Just About Anything, Language of Love, Chill: Stress Reducing Techniques for a More Balanced, Peaceful You, In Their Shoes: Extraordinary Women Describe Their Amazing Careers, the teen self-help series Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul: The Real Deal, and Run for Your Life: A Book for Beginning Women Runners. She also created and edited the first-ever series of teen-authored memoirs with HCI Books, Louder Than Words.

As a young adult authority, Debbie is frequently interviewed about teen issues and speaks about things like career planning, goal setting, media literacy, self-esteem, and empowerment. She is the founding editor-in-chief for Heart of Gold, an online destination for teen girls passionate about entrepreneurship, social activism, and volunteerism, and consults for clients such as the Girl Scouts of America, the Disney Channel, McGraw Hill, Brain Quest, Razorfish, Kaplan, and Speakaboos. She has an MA in Media Studies from the New School for Social Research and a BA in Communications from Pennsylvania State University. In her “spare” time, Debbie serves on the Advisory Board for Seattle Girls’ School and is a member of the Honorary Board for WriteGirl, a one-on-one mentoring program matching teen girls with women writers.

In the summer of 2013, Debbie moved from Seattle to Amsterdam (Netherlands, not New York), where she currently lives with her husband Derin, homeschools her eleven-year-old son Asher, and serves as lap-of-choice for her mischievous cat Alex. She is an avid runner and explorer, claims reality shows and Twizzlers as her guiltiest of pleasures, and will happily sing karaoke whenever the opportunity arises.